The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Cruyff Turn from the Marseille Turn.
This week we look, in our Engagement Hub, at the best way of communicating decisions you disagree with. Having read a recent article with some very specific tips on doing this, we ask how engagement teams can deliver bad news.
And of course, there’s the emporium of easy answers and tough choices that is Charlie’s Attic – this week featuring a festival for those with the nearly-extinct name Nigel and a timely reflection on why politicians use walk-on music.
We really enjoyed this recent Medium piece, about how to communicate a decision you don’t agree with. It takes 4 minutes to read, and it well worth going through in detail. The topic it looks at – how you explain to others something you aren’t sold on yourself – is an interesting one. It is arguably talked about less than it should be.
One important point is about what the article’s author, Ann-Marie Barlow, introduces as the ‘trust triangle’. This comprises three elements: authenticity, empathy, and logical rigour. Barlow points out that the last of these is especially important, helping you to understand and communicate the rationale driving a decision, even if you don’t personally like it.
The piece reflects many of the dilemmas that emerge professionally, where the necessity of working in a large organisation will sometimes mean you become the messenger or frontperson for something you don’t support. And it is a big feature of politics too, where holding a party line can be essential, and where ideas of collective responsibility within Cabinet are frequently put to the test. Elected representatives often have to back unpopular moves, but do so on the basis that they agree with the wider thrust of their party’s leadership.
But perhaps, more than anything, Barlow’s arguments apply to engagement and consultation. Teams working with the public will at points find themselves delivering bad news, or presenting a ‘least worst’ set of options. Sometimes, engagement and comms teams may not support the decision at a private level, but will nevertheless need to work with the community too make the best of it.
Many of the pieces of guidance come back to the types of issues Barlow talks about, around authenticity and empathy. Her point about logical rigour is a really important one, meanwhile. Any consultation around a difficult choice will need, above all, to explain the choices behind a decision, so that residents understand it for themselves.
Ultimately, no one likes having to front a choice they hate, and there are times where doing so becomes impossible. But the Medium article is an interesting primer in how to approach these sorts of dilemmas in a constructive way.
And finally this week Charlie’s Attic, the part of the Weekly released through gritted teeth each Friday:
Get your town planning head on, with this article on the 15-minute city.
Enjoy this brief history of each of your favourite Microsoft Word fonts.
